Augustinianism

Augustinianism was a school of philosophy in the Middle Ages that was promoted by Augustine of Hippo (its founder), Anselm of Canterbury, Roger Bacon, Bonaventure, and others. It was the dominant school during the early Middle Ages, later to be replaced by Thomism. Augustinians believed that man is a soul using a body; the soul is superior to the body, and emotions/sensations are acts of soul. "Illumination of the soul" means that intellect is illuminated by God. Exemplary ideas (the first principles of things) were held to be God's thoughts and ideas. Rationes seminales (rational seeds) meant the potential for matter to become something, just like the objects created by God in six days. Hylomorphism, originally an Aristotelian theory, meant that within each individual lays a plurality of forms. The highest form of any body was corporeality (light), a composite unity. Spirit and matter were held to be opposites, but spiritual matter is manifested in the spiritual bodies of the resurrected bodies in the New Testament. Augustine rejected any cyclical version of history, seeing history as a part of God’s plan and providence, and he saw the will as a faculty of charity and love.